Providing a List of Commonly Used Shortcuts for Blind Students

The Lab Rubric specifies that frequently used keyboard shortcuts should be provided as a separate document and are suitable for printing in Braille.

A complex development environment might have hundreds of keyboard shortcuts. For example, here is the list of keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Word, 2010. Visit this page and click on the link labelled "+ Show All" near the top of the page to expand the full list. The student must simultaneously search through the shortcut keys while attempting to follow a list of instructions for completing the lab. For example, here are instructions for completing a lab using VBA in Microsoft Word. Trying to follow all of the instructions in this document while simultaneously looking up shortcut keys in a separate Window can be extremely challenging. In addition to the Word keyboard shortcuts, the student must also refer to Windows shortcuts, Windows Explorer shortcuts, and application-specific shortcuts for the program they are writing. This can result in the student needing to switch between several different development environment windows, application windows, and browser windows with shortcut lists for different applications.

This process can be greatly simplified by creating a summary list of commonly used shortcut keys. Such a document will be easier to search through in online form, and can also be printed as a Braille document and read by the student without needing to switch Windows. This makes it much easier for the student to keep context when following the list of instructions. To illustrate this, here are the keyboard shortcuts needed to complete the VBA lab linked above. These shortcuts have also been organized to specify which applications they apply to, and also organized roughly in the order that the student will need to use them.

Windows Explorer

Shortcut

Action

Alt + Up Arrow

Up one level

Up and Down Arrows

Previous and next selected file

Return

Open selected file or folder

Shift + F10

Right click (brings up context menu)

Microsoft Word

Shortcut

Action

F6

Cycle through task panes (including notifications)

Alt + E

Select the "Enable this content" button in the Microsoft Office Security Options dialog.

Alt + F11

Open the Visual Basic Developer's Window

Alt

Activate Word ribbon toolbar

Left and Right Arrows

Cycle through tools when the Word ribbon toolbar is active

Alt then F then I

Open Word Options dialog

Up and Down Arrows

Previous and next options when the Word Options dialog is open

Alt then L then V

Open the Visual Basic Developer's Window

Ctrl + S

Save the document

Alt + F4

Close the document

Visual Basic Developer's Window

Shortcut

Action

Ctrl + R

Select the Project Explorer pane

Up and Down Arrows

Navigate through project folders when the Project Explorer pane is selected

Right Arrow

Open the currently selected folder when the Project Explorer pane is selected

F7

Open the Code Window for the currently selected document in the Project Explorer pane

F5

Launch the Lab Form Dialog for the code in the currently selected Code Window